


Nostalgia

by OnyxReed



Category: Steven Universe (Cartoon)
Genre: Alternate History, Canon Compliant, Gen, Nostalgia, One Shot, Other
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-21
Updated: 2015-05-21
Packaged: 2018-03-31 14:18:24
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,211
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3981232
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/OnyxReed/pseuds/OnyxReed
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Lapis shares a bit of forgotten history with Peridot.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Nostalgia

**Author's Note:**

> http://marxistperidot.tumblr.com/post/115534950506/nostalgia
> 
> This was my first work on Steven Universe.

No day had been menial since the shooting star had fallen.

When she first saw a distant, blue, amorphous spot flying through the sky of Homeworld, Peridot thought that it was just that: a meteorite, something that one of her subordinates would destroy with the simple push of a vaporizer. In fact, she very nearly gave that order when she noticed that nobody was taking care of it.

As a detached finger hovered over the broadcaster, she suddenly noticed that the spot was not on fire. She paused. As it drew closer, the “meteor” appeared to be made of a liquid.

Since that day, the brunt of dealing with the arrival fell upon her. In her hands was the sovereignty over Yellow Diamond’s largest headache to date: the return of Lapis Lazuli.

Peridot never knew Lapis before her arrival; she had only heard of the blue gem through stories of her power and her final sacrifice. However, she had always thought that “final sacrifices” implied some end. Nevertheless, here she was: Lapis Lazuli, the gem whose power was infused with the spirit of water, the ichor of life and the harbinger of great destruction. 

With great power came great responsibility. The responsibility for Lapis’s obedience fell into Peridot’s hands.

\--

She narrows her eyes beneath her tinted visor as she runs a routine inspection of her ship by way of her touchpad. Lapis Lazuli, whose presence washes upon her like a wave of untapped power, enters the head of the ship.

Lapis lets out a long, drawn-out sigh. She had not been given the heroine’s welcome that she had expected. Homeworld had changed, and she was not prepared to land in the net of the newly-existing structure.

“Anything to do today?” Lapis leans against the cold wall of the vessel.

“Nothing out of the ordinary.” The reply is terse.

Homeworld’s newest burden carelessly slides down the wall, landing on the cold floor with a slight thud. She extends her legs.

“Will you let me go leave the ship today?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“Protocol.”

Lapis furrows her eyebrows, a hand balling up into a fist by her side. A few minutes pass, the silence only filled with the occasional muttering of coded language by Peridot and slight adjustments of the touchpad.

“I could leave if I wanted.” There was a hint of a threat.

“I know,” Peridot replies, clearly preoccupied.

“No. You aren’t hearing me. I could leave.”

“You say this every morning, Lapis.”

Lapis growls. “I could drown you and this ship. I could fly off of this planet and experience the freedom that I have been denied for longer than you have been made. I am not kidding.”

Peridot is glad that she is not facing her liability, because her face strains just momentarily. Lapis seems much more convincing this time around, even though she’s heard her threats of leaving multiple times. After she takes a moment to compose herself, the lime green gem swivels on the ball of her foot to face Lapis Lazuli, a stern frown plastered on her face.

“Then why don’t you leave?”

Lapis sighs, bringing her knees and thighs close into her abdomen and clutching them. “How long ago were you made?”

Peridot collapses her touchpad, allowing her fingers to float back to their places. “Why? You are avoiding the question.”

“And you’re getting defensive. Are you really so young?” Lapis’s lips curl into a small smirk despite the slight somber undertone in her voice.

Blushing noticeably, Peridot glances to the side. “You are being invasive.”

“Before your time,” Lapis begins, her smile becoming far more nostalgic than mischievous, “there was order, but things were much less militaristic. If someone had returned, they would be welcomed. I returned with a certain level of naivete. I thought that I would be remembered as who I was.”

Peridot looks back towards Lapis, putting both hands on her hips. “Are you defaming the diamonds?”

“Of course not,” Lapis insists. “I am simply offering you a history lesson that you have been denied.”

“History lesson? I don’t have time for this, Lazuli.”

Lapis shakes her head. “You just said that we’re doing nothing out of the ordinary today, did you not?”

“That doesn’t mean that I have time to waste on your dusty stories.”

“Yes, it does,” Lapis insists. “You are incredibly efficient, and you can make up for any time lost by appeasing me. Come and sit down.”

At the drawing beckon of three blue digits, Peridot, albeit apprehensively, draws closer and sits next to Lapis. Even though half of her mind is parsing through the list of laws that she is currently breaking, ways that this could go wrong, and contradictions between Lapis’s account and that of the official opinion of Yellow Diamond, she listens, with as much intentness as she could offer, to her prisoner.

Lapis speaks with unparalleled passion, one that matched the intensity of her power that Peridot can always feel looming above her head or crackling within her hands. She is elated. For once, Peridot could see the blue gem smile, even though she knew that the visage was one that she is borrowing from her beloved past. 

She emotes as she describes the rule of gems with odd names, ones that were not diamonds, ancients of whom Peridot had only heard in whispers among her older subordinates. She speaks passionately of her imprisonment and the wonders that she saw through the mirror. Once she reached the Civil War, her tone became somber. She describes what she saw - magic replaced with gem destabilizers - and what she did not - the effects on the changes as she, against her volition, was brought to Earth, not to return for uncountable years. She knew what was happening, but she couldn’t experience it, viewing it only through her glassy prison.

“And, so, I exchange a foreign prison to a prison in my own home.”

Peridot finally chimes in once Lapis has spoken her heart out. “You are fully aware that you could be shattered for what you said, right?” She speaks with the same terse nature as always.

“Yes.” Lapis shrugs slowly, but her countenance is at peace.

“Why should I not report you?”

Another shrug. “You have no reason to spare me that you can codify in your calculations.”

Peridot remains silent, simply staring at Lapis with a look of incredulity. The sheer power that washes through her with Lapis’s presence is now laced with a sense of brashness. However, the blue gem’s gamble payed off. Her bluff has been called.

“Of course there is a reason,” Peridot finally insists, looking straight ahead at the wall in front of both of them. “I need your intelligence to deal with the pests on Earth.”

Lapis raises a brow, and her grin becomes cheeky again. “For a second, I thought that you simply enjoyed my company. Our lives are long. It’s nice to have someone to come along and break protocol for once, yes?” Her eyes trace over to Peridot.

She quickly looks away to spare Peridot the embarrassment of having been discovered. Sure enough, the lime green gem blushes furiously.

Lapis stands up, sparing Peridot a slight glance as she exits the head. “I will be at the bridge.”


End file.
